I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this one seems legit.... Apparently in 2013 the sun will peak with solar storms creating massive geomagnetic storms on earth frying all electronics. Any experts here? Should I sell my studio? I'm actually quite serious. I hate the idea of losing, basically, everything I own.

Well, I really am a logical thinker and I don't know what to think about this when it's backed up by scientists and the topic is printed in respectable news outlets. But, not being an expert on this I don't know, you know. One of my personal ideas is that you simply can't control or fully protect yourself from these kinds of mass earth-changing events. We're pretty much at the mercy of Earth and the Universe. That said, is there a practical and affordable thing we can do to protect our electronics or is it futile and pointless?

I don't want to be the type who says "if it hasn't happened yet, then it can't happen." I just think if this were possible, there would be electronics companies trying to sell us special shielded or "sunstorm-proof" electronics at a premium.

Remember, the Y2k thing ended up being mostly BS, despite sounding plausible. And high tech companies were lined up years ahead of time trying to sell us Y2K-compliant solutions and upgrades. At my day job, we upgraded both our Unix server and our voice mail server just in case -- about $90k in upgrades even though we weren't sure it would really be a problem.

I think if a solution were needed, someone would be trying to sell it to you.

I didn't fall for the Y2K thing or really any of the other conspiracy things but those were all sort of man-made things, this one is all about the timing of the sun flaring up in sort of a double-whammy.

Maybe the perfect business to get in to is selling solar storm insurance then, eh?

In all seriousness, I think if solar activity was THAT bad so that even relatively small consumer electronics were affected, we (humanity) would be in such deep shit on a bigger scale that the state of your synthesizers would be the least of your concerns. Not saying it will or could even happen (and yeah, I remember Y2K too), but any solar event that would be able to fry small pieces of gear, think what it would do air traffic control systems, main frames, etc etc etc. I've seen too many post-apocalyptic movies (e.g. The Road, The Book of Eli, to name two recent ones) and I do NOT want to live in a society anything remotely like that anyway, either with or without synthesizers! LOL

In all seriousness, I think if solar activity was THAT bad so that even relatively small consumer electronics were affected, we (humanity) would be in such deep shit on a bigger scale that the state of your synthesizers would be the least of your concerns. Not saying it will or could even happen (and yeah, I remember Y2K too), but any solar event that would be able to fry small pieces of gear, think what it would do air traffic control systems, main frames, etc etc etc. I've seen too many post-apocalyptic movies (e.g. The Road, The Book of Eli, to name two recent ones) and I do NOT want to live in a society anything remotely like that anyway, either with or without synthesizers! LOL

In several of the articles I've read there is a lot of discussion of serious serious problems IF this were to happen. Let alone the power grid, if this sort of thing does affect a large portion of electronic devices then yes civilization would be in a rough spot for sure and who needs a PCM80 if this happens!? Ok, really, I'm not a crazy alarmist... still bothers me though.... but so did the baked beans I had for dinner.

It's absolutely true - we don't know exactly when and how bad it will be until it actually hits us. But it could hit us and I think it could be pretty bad if all the right things come into play for the perfect storm. I really think modern societies will weather this event rather well, but citizens will be expected to protect their own electronics. I just think it's good to understand the potential effects and if there is a simple thing we can do then we should be ready for it.